Stott v. State

• Decision Date: 13 August 2021
• Docket Number: Court of Appeals Case No. 20A-CR-1924
• Citation: 174 N.E.3d 236
• Parties: Antwon A. STOTT, Appellant-Defendant, v. STATE of Indiana, Appellee-Plaintiff.
• Court: Indiana Appellate Court

174 N.E.3d 236

Antwon A. STOTT, Appellant-Defendant,

v.STATE of Indiana, Appellee-Plaintiff.

Court of Appeals Case No. 20A-CR-1924

Court of Appeals of Indiana.

FILED August 13, 2021

Attorneys for Appellant: Valerie K. Boots, Christopher Taylor-Price, Marion County Public Defender Agency, Indianapolis, Indiana

Attorneys for Appellee: Theodore E. Rokita, Attorney General of Indiana, Ellen H. Meilaender, Deputy Attorney General, Indianapolis, Indiana

Mathias, Judge.

[1] Antwon Stott was convicted in Marion Superior Court of two counts of resisting law enforcement, one as a Level 6 felony and one as a Class A misdemeanor, and he was found to be a habitual offender. Stott appeals, arguing that his two resisting-law-enforcement convictions violate the prohibition against double jeopardy and that the trial court erred in admitting certain evidence at trial. The State agrees with Stott that the two convictions constitute a substantive double-jeopardy violation. And we agree with Stott that admitting the challenged evidence was reversible error.

[2] We reverse and remand for proceedings consistent with this opinion.

Facts and Procedural History

[3] On October 3, 2018, law enforcement was conducting surveillance and patrolling—in both unmarked and marked vehicles—an area located on the northeast side of Indianapolis due to a "recent uptick in violence." Supp. Tr. p. 23. Officer Sojka, who was undercover, surveilled a Marathon gas station located at an intersection where there had been a homicide the previous night. Parked across the street in an unmarked vehicle, Officer Sojka observed the gas station through binoculars. Tr. Vol. II, p. 239. He was looking for "general criminal activity" or "suspicious activity," which he then relayed by radio to law enforcement in the area. Id. at 200.

[4] Sometime "around one o'clock" that afternoon, Officer Sojka noticed eight people standing near the front of the gas-station entrance "just hanging out talking, coming in and out intermittently." Id. at 201, 239. The group congregated close to a Dodge Ram truck, and the officer watched as a Chevrolet Suburban pulled into the lot and parked by the truck. The driver of the Suburban, a Black male wearing a gray jumpsuit, exited the vehicle and greeted the others "as if he knew them." Id. at 203. He then got back into the driver's seat of the Suburban where he was joined in the front-passenger seat by a Black male wearing "an all denim outfit." Id. at 204. At that point, a third Black male, who Officer Sojka had earlier observed enter and exit the driver's side of the Dodge Ram, approached the passenger-side of the Suburban. Officer Sojka saw this third man hand a silver revolver "into the open passenger side door." Id. at 224. Soon after the exchange, the Suburban pulled out of the gas-station lot.

[5] About ten minutes later, the Suburban returned to the Marathon, parked at a pump, and the man in the gray jumpsuit—the driver—and the man wearing all-denim—the passenger—exited the vehicle. Within a few minutes, both the Suburban and the Dodge Ram left the gas-station. This time, however, the only occupant of the Suburban was "the male in the all gray jumpsuit." Id. at 211. Officer Sojka followed the Suburban in his vehicle, and a second undercover officer, Officer McDonald, followed the Dodge Ram.

[6] Officer McDonald followed the Dodge Ram to a nearby apartment complex where the truck backed into a parking spot. There, he could see two occupants inside the vehicle. The officer "could only see the driver's side door" from where he was parked, and he watched as a third man exited an apartment and walked "to the passenger side." Tr. Vol. III, p. 9. During this time, "[t]he driver's door opened," id. , and Officer McDonald noticed that "[t]he driver had the denim outfit on," id. at 32. As the Dodge Ram and its three occupants left the apartment complex, Officer McDonald—and other law enforcement in the area—kept track of the truck's whereabouts.

[7] Officer McDonald caught up with the vehicle at a nearby McDonald's restaurant, where the truck was parked. Noticing it was empty, the officer parked about fifty yards away to continue surveillance. "Within about a minute," Officer McDonald "observed three occupants exit the McDonald's and walk towards the Dodge Ram." Id. at 16. The driver wore "an all denim jean outfit," the front-seat passenger wore "basketball shorts and a black tee shirt," and the back-seat passenger wore "ripped blue jeans and [a] blue sweatshirt." Id. at 17; see also Ex. Vol. at 18. Officer McDonald followed behind the truck as it prepared to exit. Meanwhile, Officer Augustinovicz, in a marked police vehicle, observed the Dodge Ram from a parking lot located across the street from the McDonald's. Both officers watched as the truck turned left even though it "had its right-hand turn signal on." Tr. Vol. III, p. 185. At that point, Officer Augustinovicz decided to conduct a traffic stop, and Officer McDonald followed close behind.

[8] After exiting the McDonald's, the Dodge Ram turned right onto a side street and Officer Augustinovicz activated his emergency lights to initiate the stop. Officer McDonald "stopped approximately one to two houses behind [Officer Augustinovicz] and observed the traffic stop until another officer could get there." Id. at 25. "The truck stopped fairly immediately," and Officer Augustinovicz exited his vehicle and walked towards the Dodge Ram. Id. at 188. "[B]ecause the windows were so tinted," Officer Augustinovicz could not tell how many people were inside the vehicle, what anyone was wearing, or what they looked like. Id. at 210–211, 219. During this time, Officer Reetz, who was also driving a marked police vehicle, arrived to assist. But before he could come to a complete stop, the driver of the Dodge Ram revved the engine and sped off.

[9] As Officer Reetz pursued the truck, it sped around a sharp curve, drove through a stop sign while turning left onto a busy street, and made a quick right turn onto a side street. When the officer made the same right turn, he saw "an explosion of a tree." Id. at 66; see Ex. Vol. at 30–32. The truck had struck the tree on the west side of the street and ended up in the front yard of a home on the east side of the street. Officer Reetz came upon the vehicle while branches from the tree continued to fall, and he noticed that the driver's door and both passenger-side doors were opened. Tr. Vol. III, p. 73. Though the officer did not see anyone exit the driver's door, he saw "two black males run from the passenger side of the truck." Id. at 71. Officer Reetz briefly gave chase, but soon returned "to get a perimeter set up" and "to make sure nobody else was inside [the truck] that could have been hurt." Id. at 73. Several responding officers arrived, and though law enforcement scoured the area and spoke with several witnesses, only one of the three men—Brandon Woodfork, the back-seat passenger—was apprehended that day. Id. at 90–91.

[10] From inside the truck, officers recovered two firearms, body armor, three cellphones, an Indiana identification card for Kameron Means, and a utility bill in Means's name. Law enforcement subsequently learned that Kameron Means—the man wearing basketball shorts and a black tee shirt—was the front-seat passenger. After securing the crash site, Officers McDonald and Augustinovicz went to the McDonald's restaurant to see "if they had any video that would help in the investigation." Id. at 195. The officers were unable to view the surveillance footage that evening because none of the employees working at the time had "access to the video system." Id. at 197. So, Officer Augustinovicz returned the following morning and viewed the surveillance footage, taking several pictures of the video on his cellphone. The officer "believed" that a man depicted in the footage, who appeared to be wearing an all-denim outfit, was Antwon Stott. Officer Augustinovicz based this belief on a picture of Stott that the officer had previously received via "an e-mail communication." Id. at 201.

[11] Officers subsequently secured an arrest warrant for Stott and, three weeks after the incident, executed that warrant. While placing him under arrest, law enforcement collected Stott's cellphone which had the same phone number as one of the three phones recovered from the crashed truck weeks earlier. The State charged Stott with one count of felony unlawful possession of a firearm by a serious violent felon, one count of felony resisting law enforcement, one count of misdemeanor resisting law enforcement, and with being a habitual offender.

[12] In pretrial motions and hearings on those motions, Stott objected to two pieces of evidence that the State sought to introduce at trial: (1) an audio recording of police-officer radio traffic from the time after the truck fled the traffic stop; and (2) Officer Augustinovicz's cellphone photographs of the McDonald's surveillance footage. See Supp. Tr. pp. 32–36, 65–67; Tr. Vol. II, pp. 181–82; Appellant's Conf. App. Vol. II, pp. 11, 189. Stott argued that the radio-traffic recording constituted inadmissible hearsay to which no exception applied, and that the photographs lacked sufficient authentication. The court ultimately ruled that both were admissible.

[13] Stott's two-day jury trial began on September 14, 2020. During the trial, counsel renewed the objections to the evidence mentioned above. The jury found Stott not guilty of the unlawful possession of a firearm count and guilty of both resisting-law-enforcement counts. Stott subsequently waived his right to trial by jury for the habitual-offender enhancement, and the court found Stott to be a habitual offender. The court entered convictions accordingly and imposed an aggregate six-year sentence. Stott now appeals.

Standard of Review

[14] Stott argues that the trial court committed reversible error by admitting certain evidence over objection at trial. It is well settled that trial...